Wild Jack (5 page)

I said, “Wait a minute.”

“What's that?”

“I've been thinking. Those caves on the far side of the island . . . we could hide him there.”

“Hopeless,” Kelly said. “They'd find him in a few hours with a search party. Even if they didn't, how long do you think it could last? Days at the most, then back to the stockade. Forget it.”

“Days might be enough. It won't be long before my father gets me out of here. Tomorrow maybe. He might be able to do something.”

“For you, yes. I don't doubt that. But not for Sunyo. This place is under the International Police.
Your father may be a councillor in London, but he has no authority in Kyoto.”

I could not dispute that. I racked my brain to find another argument which would persuade him to drop this harebrained scheme.

Kelly said, “You've been a great help, Clive. I mean it. I couldn't have got him out of the stockade by myself. Just help me get the boat down now, and that's enough. Take your two blankets back to the tent, and there'll be no way of tying you in with us being missing. Don't worry—we'll make it.”

“Make it where? To the Outlands?”

“As far as we're concerned, the Outlands are better than staying here. I promise you.”

So I helped him carry the boat down. In addition to the plastic sails and ropes there was a collapsible mast. It had metal trimmings which had rusted to nothing, but the mast itself seemed in fair shape. I helped Kelly fit it into its socket and rig the sails after a fashion.

“There's not much wind,” I said.

Kelly was wrestling with the boom. “Not much. But enough.”

“And what there is is onshore.”

“Yes, but the tide's making northwest. We'll get clear, all right.”

I shrugged. Argument was plainly useless.

Kelly said, “If we can float her and you can lend a hand with Sunyo . . .”

We wrestled the boat over the sand and into the water. There was still a chance the hull would prove not to be watertight, and even Kelly could scarcely propose setting off in a vessel that was leaking. He clambered in while I held on.

“How is it?”

“Sound as a bell.” A wave splashed in, halfway up my thighs. “I'll hang on now while you get Sunyo.”

Sunyo did not reply when I first spoke to him, and I thought he was asleep or had fainted. But he roused himself and sat up slowly and painfully. In the moonlight he looked terrible.

I said, “Lean on me.”

He shook his head. “I can walk.”

He did it, with an immense effort but unaided. I remembered he had had nothing to eat for three days except a couple of crusts of bread and tonight not even that. He waded into the sea and staggered as a small wave hit him, but recovered.

He needed help, though, to get into the boat. Somehow Kelly and I hauled him over the side, with the dinghy rocking violently and threatening to turn over. Kelly got in after him. He said, “Thanks for everything, Clive.”

“I still think . . .”

“I know you do.” His teeth gleamed in moonlight as he grinned. “And you could be right. But it looks different from where we're standing. Best of luck. I hope your release comes through soon.”

“Best of luck to you. You need it more than I do.”

“Sure. If you can contribute just one little push to get us moving . . .”

I waded forward, pushing the dinghy out. The beach shelved under my feet. A receding wave tugged at the boat, pulling it from me. That was when instead of pushing I gripped the gunnel and heaved myself on board. The dinghy rocked and shipped water but righted itself.

Kelly asked, in genuine surprise, “What do you think you're up to?”

“It looks as though I'm coming with you.” I looked at the shore behind us. “Don't ask me why, because I don't know.”

5

I
ASKED MYSELF THE QUESTION
again as the dinghy drifted out on the tide and the distance from shore steadily increased, and the only answer was that I was an idiot. I did not flatter myself that I was doing Kelly and Sunyo any good by going with them; if anything, the reverse was true. The biggest danger to the boat was the risk of swamping, and the addition of a third person would only increase that.

I had climbed aboard on impulse, and the impulse was short-lived. It was replaced by another: to dive in and swim ashore while I still could. I think I
might have done so, except that Sunyo groaned faintly and Kelly said, “Clive, see if you can help him get comfortable while I deal with this sail.”

I did what I could with the help of Kelly's blankets. My own two were on the beach where I had left them. I should have had the sense to bring them, but, more to the point, I should have had the sense to swim back and pick them up and head for the tent. Inside ten minutes I could have been wrapped up and asleep on solid ground, instead of rocking in this cockleshell on a very large and very wet sea.

When I looked toward shore again, it was more than a hundred yards away, not an easy swim against what was plainly a strong tide. The island was taking on shape in the moonlight, the long line of beach curving out and the higher ground to the south coming in view. I looked the other way and there was nothing but sea, featureless except for the broad flickering path cast by the moon.

I said to Kelly, “Is there any particular destination in mind, or do we just drift?”

He pointed at the moon. “As long as that's on our left, we're heading roughly east. The coast of France is almost due east.”

But nine miles away, I remembered. I said, “What sort of speed do you think we're making?”

Kelly shook his head. “No idea.”

He sounded very cheerful, a good deal more cheerful than I felt. Much as I had hated life in the camp, I was beginning to see certain advantages to it—things like food and solid ground. And the possibility that at any moment a guard might yell, “Anderson, report to the commandant's office!” Maybe on first parade tomorrow . . . but it would do me no good now.

The island dwindled, fading into the moonlit haze of sea and sky. I became conscious of the empti­ness of my stomach. It was six hours or more since supper, which had been only watery stew since we had saved our bread for Sunyo.

I thought of something else and said to Kelly, “Water. . . .”

“Yes.” He laughed. “You don't realize how much of it there is in the sea.”

“Drinking water. We haven't got any.”

After a pause, he said, “Yes. That was a bit stupid. I didn't think.”

I looked at the vague, distant smudge of the island.

“Do you think we ought to go back and get some?”

“No chance. It's not just the tide—what wind there is would be against us.”

We were silent again. Kelly said, “Less than ten miles to France. If it takes all night we won't be too bad. We're not going to die of thirst before morning.”

It was meant to be cheerful, and I supposed I ought to have been able to say something cheerful back, but I could not think of anything. Sunyo lay wrapped in blankets, and Kelly and I sat upright, watching the sea in silence.

It must have been half an hour later that I said, “The moon.”

It was moving very slowly across the sky, from its station on our left hand to a position dead ahead. That was the impression. The reality was that the boat was swinging north in a current far stronger than the gentle following wind.

Kelly said, “Yes, I've seen it.” He sounded grimmer. “The tide must run really fierce between the island and the French coast.”

“What happens now?”

“It will take us north into the main part of the English Channel. It should ease after that. We might find enough wind to take us back to France.”

“And if we don't get the wind?”

“Well, there's land to the north as well, isn't there? The south coast of England.”

“Not nine miles away, though. More like seventy.”

“Sure. We won't be in for breakfast.”

“And the tide may not take us north. It could take us west, into the ocean.”

“You're a great little ray of sunshine.” The grimness had turned angry. “You got any other comforting speculations to offer?”

“When I told you how mad the scheme was,” I said, “you wouldn't listen. And apart from that, you just forgot to bring any drinking water along. You've been doing very well so far.”

“Shut up,” Kelly said. “We didn't ask you to come, Mr. Councillor's son. Swim back, and welcome. If you don't feel like doing that, shut up.”

He was angry and afraid, as I was too. I thought of several cutting things but did not say them. My mouth felt dry. Suddenly, despite the coolness of the night, I was very thirsty.

• • •

The weather deteriorated. It was first apparent in a freshening of the wind and increased choppiness of the waves. It freshened from the wrong quarter, from the southeast. Our chances of getting to France were diminishing rapidly.

Sunyo woke up in order to be sick, or rather to retch from an empty stomach. It was not long before Kelly followed suit, as the sea grew rougher and the dinghy tossed on it like a cork. I held out longer but succumbed at last. Clouds crossed the moon—in wisps at first, then thicker till it was completely obscured. I could scarcely see the sea but could hear it well enough, in wind and wave, and feel it when a wave slapped over the gunnels and drenched me through.

After a very long time there was light in the east. It slowly brightened, but the sky stayed gray and cloud-covered, and the sea was gray all round us. I strained my eyes for a sight of land, but there was nothing, not even a sea bird to break the heaving monotony of the waste of water.

The others were also awake and looking about them. Kelly asked Sunyo how he felt, and he said he was all right. Surprisingly, he did look a little better.

Kelly said, “Not much for breakfast, I'm afraid.”

His grin included me, and I willingly took the olive branch. I said, “I was thinking of eggs and bacon. Three eggs, no—four. And half a dozen rashers. With a very big cup of coffee. Creamy coffee.”

“Ham and eggs for me,” Kelly said. “Buckwheat cakes and honey. And fresh orange juice. A lot of fresh orange juice.”

The thought made me realize how thirsty I was. I did not feel like going on with that particular game, and neither, it seemed, did Kelly. We stared glumly at the surrounding sea. Sunyo was staring at it, too. He spoke, more to himself than anyone else, and I thought I'd misheard him. I asked, “What was that?”

“It's beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” I had heard him right. “What is?”

“The two colors of gray: the sky and the sea. They're almost the same, and yet there is a contrast. My father had a picture in which there was an effect something like that. It was a scroll which you held in one hand and unrolled with the other, showing a panorama of landscape starting high in the mountains and going down to the sea. That was where the two grays were.”

Incredible, I thought, that he could talk about pictures in a situation like this. Though it could be an advantage. Anything was which took our minds off the spot we were in. As though thinking along the same lines, Kelly started talking about his home, but in connection with dogs, not pictures—his father bred King Charles spaniels as a hobby. I contributed our tropical fish tank, which took up one wall of the sitting room.

Sunyo remained silent, meditating maybe, but Kelly and I went on trying to reminisce ourselves out of this watery wilderness. He spoke of the race course they had in Jacksonville, something London could not boast. I countered it by describing the stretch of river just inside the wall which had been designed as a swimming center, with individual pools on the north bank and the temperature of the whole river raised more than ten degrees by heating elements on the riverbed. Londoners were proud of the amount of energy they could afford to spend in that way.

“Kind of a waste, isn't it?” Kelly said. “I mean, heating up a whole river.”

“You waste land on a race course. All our public land is parks.”

I spoke a bit sharply, and he replied in the same tone. “Our parks are as good as any you have in London, with poinsettias and jacaranda and oranges growing out in the open. You can walk through a Jacksonville park and pick oranges off the trees and eat them.”

The image was powerful and made my throat seem more parched than ever. I said dispiritedly, “Jacksonville or London—what's the difference? We're a long way from either.”

• • •

Time dragged by. The cloud cover remained unbroken, a heavy pall stretching from skyline to dim skyline. A sight of the sun, even a patch of brightness, would have given us some idea of the direction in which we were drifting, but in this featureless seascape we could equally be heading north toward England or south back to France. Also, and I began to fear it more and more, we could be on course for nothing but the immense emptiness of the western ocean. Kelly's Florida lay that way, but I doubted if he would have any enthusiasm for trying to get home by such a route.

Sunyo said little. Kelly and I had spells of talking,
more often wrangling, intermingled with periods of gloomy silence. Apart from hunger and thirst, there was tiredness; despite the discomfort, I found myself dozing off, waking with a start to the wretchedness of my surroundings. As the day wore on, the gray of sky deepened. Night fell and it turned black, pitch black, with no trace of moonlight.

I slept and woke and slept again. I had disjointed dreams that were more like nightmares, but there was one that was different. I was in my speedboat on the river, and Miranda was there, too. I started telling her what had happened since I saw her—about being sent to the island and escaping by boat—and it was all in the past and exciting to talk about. She listened, with her blond hair tossed over one shoulder. I was pleased to have her to myself, then realized, as one does in a dream, that this wasn't true because Gary was there as well. I told him what I thought of him, and since that did not seem to be enough, I also hit him. We flailed at each other on the deck of the speedboat, and the next moment I was in the water.

I woke up feeling wetness and thought the dream had become reality. But the wetness was of stinging
drops on my face and hands. I realized it was raining.

I called to the others and they answered. After that, I was too concerned with trying to catch the rain. I cupped my hands against my cheeks, collecting rain drops and licking them up. No orange juice could have tasted so good.

The rain lasted about half an hour, long enough to take the edge off our thirst but not to quench it. The wind had risen with the rain, and more and more waves were slopping over the gunnels. Water pooled round my feet; not much yet, but it would increase. The threat of swamping began to loom again.

It would not have been so bad if we had had something to bail with. But there were too many ifs. If we had brought a supply of drinking water, if we had raided the cook house for food, if Kelly had taken my advice to hide Sunyo in a cave rather than embark on this crack-brained voyage. . . . Indignation rose once more, but I reminded myself of another if. I had clambered on board of my own volition; I could not blame anyone else for that.

We tried to bail out water with our hands, though with no apparent effect. I felt sick and
cold—the blankets lay soaked in the well of the boat—and tired to the point of being dazed. The night seemed interminable, the battering of wind and waves unending. At least things could scarcely get worse, I thought, when with a sharp cracking sound the mast broke off near its foot and fell to one side, taking the furled sail with it.

The mast dipped into the water and dragged the boat over. We were shipping seas fast and had no option but to get rid of it, so we struggled to untie and loose the ropes. At last we had the mast free and could cast it adrift. We were safe from immediate capsizing, but the water was round our ankles. We set to work bailing again furiously.

Gradually the sky lightened into the dawn of our second day at sea, still with no sight of land anywhere. I looked at Sunyo, huddled in the stern, and Kelly, lying in several inches of water in the well. They didn't make a pretty sight, but I knew I must look no better. I saw, too, the broken stump of the mast. Even if land had been in sight, how could we get to it with neither sail nor oars? We were at the mercy of wind and tide.

There could be only one end: if not death by
drowning, then by exhaustion or thirst. The former would be kinder; our strenuous bailing had only preserved us for a longer-lasting misery. This morning the wind had dropped and the sea was less rough, churning in a long swell.

None of us felt much like talking. My own mind was a morass of hopelessness lit by flashes of resentment—against Sunyo for hitting the guard, against Kelly for insisting on this lunatic scheme, against the commandant, the London police, Gary—even against my father for being away on holiday. None of this did me any good; it only made me more miserable. But I couldn't help it.

At least I no longer wrangled with Kelly; I think we were both too deadbeat. Minutes, hours drifted by, meaningless in the blankness of sea and sky. I suppose it was roughly in the middle of the day that Sunyo spoke.

“Listen.”

I did so apathetically and heard the slap of waves against the side of the boat, all too familiar.

Kelly said, “Listen to what?”

“That noise,” Sunyo said. “It sounds like an airship engine.”

I listened then. At first I could still hear only the waves. It was Kelly who said, with a lift in his voice, “I think you're right!”

I heard it myself almost immediately: a tiny distant drone in the sky. We roused ourselves, our eyes desperately searching. Sunyo was also the first to spot it and point it out: a black speck against the cloud.